From Janet Tobiassen Crosby, DVM,
Your Guide to Veterinary Medicine.
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Definition: The term necropsy refers to an examination of a body, postmortem (after death), to determine the cause of death or illness.

In vet school, we were taught that this term refers to postmortem examinations on animals, versus an autopsy, which is an examination of "self". Since you can't do an examination (or anything!) postmortem, a human examining a human cadaver was said to be doing an autopsy. A human doing a examination on an animal cadaver was said to be doing a necropsy.

In checking with several current online dictionary sources¹ through dictionary.com, I see that necropsy and autopsy are used interchangeably.

References:
¹Necropsy - Dictionary.com references

Veterinary Glossary Index

Pronunciation: neck-rop-see

Also Known As: autopsy, postmortem examination

Common Misspellings: nekropsy

Examples: They came home and were shocked to find their dog dead in the garage, so they took the body to the veterinary university for a necropsy.